Home schooling has become — by a wide margin — America’s fastest-growing form of education, as families from Upper Manhattan to Eastern Kentucky embrace a largely unregulated practice once confined to the ideological fringe, a Washington Post analysis shows.
Washington Post Data Graph:
The analysis — based on data The Post collected for thousands of school districts across the country — reveals that a dramatic rise in home schooling at the onset of the pandemic has largely sustained itself through the 2022-23 academic year, defying predictions that most families would return to schools that have dispensed with mask mandates and other covid-19 restrictions.
Even more routing around current educational institutions could occur through home schooling that is enabled by AI. Potentials exist where parents and Ed Tech startups could move faster and capture market share. But there’s a cap on how big that might get… if parents continue to work outside the home and thus be unavailable to supervise “at home students”.
OTOH, AI may also provide many more “work from home” occupations for parents, or even guaranteed income situations where parents don’t “go off to work”. Additionally, there might be forms of “home schooling” that gather students from a number of families into one place where supervision can occur with fewer adults needed at any one time.
Bottom line, there are avenues currently existing with Home Schooling and Charter Schools and Private Schools that may expand dramatically through the availability of AI Ed Tech. Legislation will be needed to avoid creating a further digital divide, and further disparities between public and private education in terms of resources available. Separation of church and state, and the unifying positive effects of public education must be addressed if there’s a continued move away from the Public School model in the US.